Do you unsubscribe current subscribers who don’t opt-in on checkout?

Hey there @aand,

Thanks for getting in touch. I’d be glad to help shed some light on this.

When an existing customer that has already been synced to MailChimp as “subscribed”, any further purchases made in WooCommerce will add purchases to that MailChimp Subscriber’s purchase history. That said, leaving the “Subscribe to list” checkbox unchecked will not affect that person’s subscription to the list in any way.

If you do have any further quesitons, let us know!

– Malachite

I’m going to have to tag in a bit and say I’ve noticed some weird unsubscribes after using this plugin, too.

Here’s what’s happening and how I have the plugin set up:

I have the plugin list settings to “hidden, not opted by default” and when someone makes a purchase who was already part of our list, it sometimes (not always) unsubscribes the user automatically. I can confirm it’s automatic because the unsubscribe time is the exact same as the purchase time.

This has me wondering, just like aand above, of how the plugin is developed to handle current subscribers. It appears that how I have the plugin set up (hidden, not oped by default) users are either subscribed to the transactional email only list, their profile is updated, or unsubscribed totally.

Hey @brandynf,

Thanks for chiming in here. That is definitely unexpected behavior and we wouldn’t expect any existing subscribers to be unsubscribed when making a purchase no matter how the checkbox is set in the List Settings tab of the plugin settings for MailChimp For WooCommerce.

That being said, if you do notice this happen again, I would recommend reaching out to MailChimp’s Support Team as they can investigate any specific email addresses that have been unsubscribed and zero in on the specific reason it occurred with you. Their Support Team can be reached here: https://kb.mailchimp.com/accounts/management/mailchimp-support-options

If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to touch base and let us know.

– Malachite

@brandynf that sounds strange indeed – if you’ve got some examples of those unsubscribes, I’d definitely recommend getting in touch with support so they can investigate further.

This is bonkers.
1. The plugin assumes there must be an opt-in form on the website it’s installed on.
2. And if you don’t have an opt-in form in said website, when “profile_update” action is triggered the plugin will unsubscribe customers which subscribed from some other place (e.g. MailChimp API calls!) Also, “profile_update” can be triggered by WP API calls too, so the plugin will attempt to update the optIn status every time, which makes no sense!
3. Point 2. should be mentioned in the description of the plugin because it’s potentially destructive.

Awesome stuff. Now let’s see how can I reverse all of this and re-subscribe those customers while not looking like a chump.

(I posted this into the wrong forum a few days ago, because there are 2 plugins with similar names, which is confusing.)

Hey @helostore,

Thanks for posting here. I can absolutely agree this would be alarming behavior and would like to help investigate this with you. The plugin is not designed to unsubscribe list members once signing up, though if you’re seeing this sort of unexpected behavior, I would like to help find out what is causing this specifically.

To get started, we’ll need to gather a few details to get caught up to speed on what you’re seeing. When you have the chance, could you pass along the following details?

— Could you provide a link to the site where you’re seeing this behavior occur?
— Could you walk us through the steps of one example of this happening?

Additionally, could you provide a few details about the site’s environment?

— What is the version of PHP the site is running on?
— What is the version of MySQL the site is running on?
— What are the active plugins running on the site when this behavior occurs?
— What is the active theme running on the site when this behavior occurs?

Thanks in advance for all this helpful information. I’ll keep an eye out for your reply.

– Malachite

Well … I already find out why that happens and fixed my local installation.
But sure, you may wanna fix that in the repository as well, as people will keep getting screwed by this.

I posted this in the wrong forum as well. See the “mc-wc-wtf.jpg” screenshot below.

At 2. I’m talking about this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1Spew9GOmzCaVdBcXQwNUlSR00/view?usp=sharing

Good luck!

Side note to @aand Don’t post “follow up” new topics for the same thing. Duplicates get deleted when found.

If you have something to add here then please do.

Hi @jdembowski, thanks for the reminder. This thread was marked as ‘Resolved’ so wasn’t quite sure whether anyone were paying attention to it anymore – I’ll delete the other post.

Hey @helostore,

Thanks for sharing that screenshot.

The code circled here is put in place to check if someone is already on the MailChimp list, and if they are, their information will be updated with the latest information on the Checkout page.

Leaving the subscription checkbox unchecked will still update the original MailChimp subscriber’s information to match the latest provided information on Checkout, but it will not unsubscribe this list member.

If you are seeing specific examples of list members becoming unsubscribed, then the best path we can take to diagnose this accurately will be to take a look at specific cases of this happening so we can pinpoint the cause of this behavior you’re seeing.

Since this is a public forum and in the interest of your information’s security, I would recommend reaching out to MailChimp Support directly with cases of this happening including steps to replicate the issue and example email addresses to whom this has happened. This will help us narrow down anything going on and ensure you don’t continue running into any errors.

You can reach out to MailChimp’s support team by following the guide in this link: https://eepurl.com/b2Q7X5

If you have further questions, don’t hesitate to touch base and let me know. I’d be glad to help as much as possible.

Thanks again,
Malachite

Leaving the subscription checkbox unchecked will still update the original MailChimp subscriber’s information to match the latest provided information on Checkout, but it will not unsubscribe this list member.

I disagree.
You’re doing this:

$api->update($list_id, $user->user_email, $this->subscribed, $merge_vars);

// File: wp-content/plugins/mailchimp-for-woocommerce/includes/processes/class-mailchimp-woocommerce-user-submit.php
// Line: 115

And if $this->subscribed is false for whatever reason, that call will unsubscribe the member from the list. I unhooked handleUserUpdated() and handleUserRegistration() and everything’s okay now.

@helostore, ouch, that’s a gigantic flaw if that’s indeed the case! @mcsupport, can you get one of the actual developers to chime in on this in here, so we can find out what’s happening?

Also @mcsupport, if you at Mailchimp want to quickly check if something’s wrong on a larger scale: Simply run a check on the lists for users of this plugin. If there’s a correlation between a list member’s order time and the list member unsubscribing, well, then that’s could point to some very bad news.

Hi @aand and @helostore,

I wanted to chime in and confirm that the plugin will not unsubscribe current list members who purchase from your store and leave the email marketing option unchecked. The plugin is additive only. If you’re seeing odd unsubscribe behavior with your list, please contact MailChimp support directly following the directions outlined in this guide and a support agent will look at your specific set up.

Warm Regards,

Pearl

Hello @helostore @aand and @mcsupport,

I just wanted to chime in again and mention that I spent a good two hours with MailChimp Technical support talking with George and Dimitri and they were very helpful.

After referencing this thread and sending them my server info along with plugins and other info as they requested, they were able to replicate unsubscribing issues when users checkout on WooCommerce. They officially submitted the issue as a bug. The end of our conversation, which they gave me permission to share is:

Upon investigation, we were able to replicate the same behavior, which is unexpected and this will be filed in as a bug and forwarded to our developers for a fix. While I currently won’t have a clear timeline to when this will be fixed as it depends on what is exactly causing the issue, which will yet have to be figured out by developers, I can confirm that this is a bug.

I’m just glad they were able to find this as unexpected and filed it as a bug. Hopefully this helps all of our situations out.

Hi @brandynf and @helostore, thanks a lot for sharing your findings! Can you let us know exactly what to look for, for signs of such an unintentional unsubscribe (I’m guessing correlation between purchase time/unsubscribe time, as you also mentioned)? And argh, having paying customers unsubscribed by mistake is pretty much the worst that could happen with this plugin, as these are critically-important subscribers for an ecommerce site.

@mcsupport, could you please proactively review unsubscribes from all stores connected with this plugin for correlation between purchase time and unsubscribe time (or other signs, if @brandynf can help with that) – and if there’s a match, resubscribe those users. Given the severity of this issue – and that the vast majority of plugin users are probably unaware of this even happening – this sounds like it needs to be reviewed and resolved at your end.